Behind the scenes with Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid as he chases NFL history
Barren white walls behind him in his makeshift office in a snug dorm room at Missouri Western’s Scanlon Hall, play sheets and notepads and an iPad among a few bare essentials on his adjacent desk, Andy Reid on Wednesday morning basked in his habitat for what has become an annual rite.
Free from the glare of cameras and sheer number of mics as he met with eight writers (and several Chiefs staff members) who most regularly cover the team — including four of us from The Star — Reid sat back in his chair in the setting he relishes for its cinder blocks. He was about as at ease as we ever get to see him these days.
So much so that his demeanor reminded me of the affable, amusing and passionate Reid I knew when he was a Mizzou assistant coach from 1989-91 — before he made what he at the time told me was a painstaking decision to join his friend and mentor Mike Holmgren with the Green Bay Packers.
Back then, Reid was known for his intensity — MU lineman Brad Funk once told me Reid could get so “red in the face that he looked like his head was going to blow off” — and humor: When a few of his linemen came to his house one Halloween, he cited a potential NCAA violation to refuse them candy — a story he remembered fondly when I reminded him about it a few years ago.
All of that personality remains, as you see more and more in his commercial appearances.
And that disposition still defines him to those who know him best.
But as an NFL head coach, Reid typically prefers to project a brusque poker face, lest he give away, well, anything at all.
A rare exception is this sit-down with reporters he’s known for years and with whom he’s comfortable having more conversational discussion — a year ago, he generally annotated his Super Bowl LVII play-sheet of some 300 options.
Not that we had an entirely unfiltered view: While Reid left a few screens around the room open, a board, presumably featuring a depth chart or some such, was covered. And his alarm clock was set two minutes ahead — which is how we came to leave nearly exactly at the end of our designated 30-minute window.
Still, it was illuminating time, as ever. And in this case, Reid clarified something I’d never heard him give away so directly before — something that will take us to the heart of a looming broader point.
While it’s long been understood that he seldom sleeps much more than three hours a night, as assistant coach Tom Melvin confirmed in February days before the Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in five seasons, Reid won’t ordinarily discuss that, in part because he doesn’t want to be perceived as bragging.
When I asked him if he sleeps more in the spartan conditions he so relishes (his dorm bedroom is no more decorated or spacious) than he might otherwise, Reid said, “Uh, no, not really.”
So … about how much does he sleep?
“You know,” he said, hesitating to elaborate.
When I playfully suggested he just didn’t want to tell us, he finally said, “If I get four hours, I’m good to go. … I’m going to have plenty of time pushing up the daisies. Long sleep.”
With Reid now 66 years old, not to mention stout in stature and an avowed “forktarian,” it’s natural to wonder how much longer he can sustain the lifestyle and pace that has enabled him to become the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history with 284 career victories — a mere 64 away from surpassing Don Shula atop the list.
But those around him most will tell you he’s as gung-ho as ever, including deciding to maximize the number of days in St. Joseph that ended Thursday as the Chiefs headed back to Kansas City to prepare for their preseason home opener against Detroit.
And there is ample evidence of why he’ll want to do this for as long as he’s able.
In the here and now, he’s consumed and energized by the challenge of trying to forge the Chiefs into the first NFL team in the Super Bowl era to win three straight titles.
More broadly, he’s still enthralled with the grind and process in itself, including drawing up plays with a certain artistic flair passed down by his father, Walter, a Hollywood set and prop designer.
(At times, fans ask Reid to draw plays for them, which he’ll occasionally indulge without giving away “any of the good stuff.” He’s also at times the recipient of play-call ideas, including one from Royals’ legend George Brett that Reid joked was problematic because it employed 12 players. Reid really insisted he was joking, but it’s still fun to picture it coming in that way.)
And when you ask him what he loves about football, he always talks about the fulfillment of teaching he finds in the game — which even provided a sanctuary of sorts even after his son Garrett died in 2012.
One notion more than anything else, though, convinces me that, barring any health issues, Reid will coach the Chiefs through the end of his contract in 2029, and possibly beyond.
It’s the reason his coaching peers typically encourage him to keep going.
For all the other beautiful collaborations this offensive genius has had with quarterbacks in particular, Patrick Mahomes is the one Reid waited all his life to coach — a prodigy with whom he essentially shares a canvas.
Their relationship embodies the ideals of the composer-performer dynamic. Reid gives Mahomes “so much freedom within structure,” as Mahomes put it Thursday, that the superstar quarterback even feels encouraged to throw a behind-the-back pass during a game.
Reid might not quite think of their link in such an exotic way, even deep down inside.
But here’s how he expressed it Wednesday while discussing a connection that was evident from their first pre-draft meeting in the weeks before the Chiefs traded up to draft Mahomes 10th overall in 2017:
When he speaks with quarterbacks, Reid said, one of his first thoughts is, “Can they see it through a coach’s eye? Maybe I’m wrong the way I look at it, but is he seeing the same thing I’m seeing? … And that’s not always the case.”
That’s not as logical or simple as it may sound, either. Simply put, there’s an intangible, almost mystical, element to it — particularly realized to its fullest between Reid and Mahomes, the two-time NFL and three-time Super Bowl MVP.
For instance, Reid said, on a third-and-short yardage situation, the primary play-call might be a deep pass.
“But, really, you’re thinking, if (the deep pass is there), let’s rip their heart out,” Reid said. “But, if not, just check it down. … Do they play the situations with you? Do they understand?
“And, anyway, Pat and I, we have that, that part of it. We’ve had it right from the get-go, which is unique.”
To the point, he added, where they see the landscape “exactly the same way.”
A notion that means all of this somehow remains a work in progress. Mahomes “wants that,” Reid said. “He wants you to keep giving him things.”
Or as Mahomes put it Thursday: Reid “always is trying to just be more creative. ... I mean, he’s one of the best coaches of all time. He could just go out saying, ‘This is how we do it. This is how I’m going to coach it, and this is how it works.’ He’s pushing himself to be better and then he asks a lot of us, but he also asks a lot of himself. I think that’s super important.”
That means the Chiefs continue to “evolve” offensively, Reid said. And, in fact, influence the evolution of the game itself.
With that forms another still-percolating element of the legacy of Reid, a historian of the game who sees the through-line from the innovation of Paul Brown to Bill Walsh to Holmgren.
While he’d be too humble to admit it, or likely even ponder it, that baton has been passed to him — punctuated by the Mahomes Era that no doubt invigorates him.
When I ventured that creative chemistry with Mahomes even keeps him young, Reid laughed and said he didn’t know about that but wished it were so.
Then he added, “It keeps your spirit young.”
Something more obvious behind the scenes than in the limelight.
This story was originally published August 16, 2024 at 6:30 AM.